BleepingComputer.com: Disappearing space

Last night as I was using my computer I got a windows message telling me I was running out of space on my C: drive. This was obviously quite surprising as, although I probably don't leave as much space on this drive as I should, there should have been at least a couple of GB free. In fact when i opened up computer it said there was only 500MB or so free and this was dwindling with every passing minute.

I was obviously worried so i ran norton a/v, ad-aware, spybot SD, registry booster and cc cleaner, as well as windows disk cleanup. This seemed to free a bit of space but my hard drive still had nowhere near as much space as I thought it should.

I left my computer on standby overnight to see what would happen, and sure enough this morning more space had disappeared. I have rebooted several times and this seems to do nothing. I have deleted a load of files so that I don't completely crash but if it keeps happening I am obviously going to run out of files to delete.

Please Help!

I do not rate spybot or adaware that much.Download malwarebytes.When you have downloaded it update it and then do a fast scan.If it finds a load of nasties I would recommend posting a hijack this log on the I think I have a virus forum.

Thanks, I downloaded it and scanned but it found nothing, which is reassuring. Also the problem seems to have ceased for now but I will be keeping an eye on it. I may post my hijackthis log in the other thread anyway just to be sure. Thanks for your help.

Do you have an application called Fraps or any other type of screen-recording application? If so, maybe it's on by accident. If you accidentally turn it on to record a movie of your screen and you do not know you did actually turn it on, your computer will quickly lose harddrive space (As it takes a lot).

I have the latest version of realplayer which can download streaming videos off web pages but it wasn't alive in processes when the space was being eaten. Interestingly it just started happening again so I unplugged my ethernet cable and it stopped (don't have wireless here). Does this mean my computer is downloading something I don't know about, or is there a possibility i've been hacked? I reset norton firewall to the default settings and it seems to have stopped again but who knows for how long. Thanks for the help guys.

Seems to me something is downloading on you...but I'm no expert on figuring that type of thing out. Sorry I can't be of more help, hopefully someone else can be.

Yeah that's kinda what I'm thinking, well adjusting my firewall seems to have worked for now, but if anyone out there has a better solution I'd be grateful. Thanks

Make sure you're not just using windows firewall. Like comodo free firewall is downloaded. Spywareblaster keeps spyware off system.

http://majorgeeks.com/Comodo_Personal_Firewall_d5033.html
http://majorgeeks.com/SpywareBlaster_d2859.html

firewall analysis:
http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive...nge/results.php

Could it be System Restore which can quickly take up a lot of space without being obvious?
To clear old System Restore sets - Log in as Administrator, Open COMPUTER, Right click on C: Drive, Select PROPERTIES, Hit DISK CLEANUP and let it do its work. When the results come back Select the MORE OPTIONS tab at the top and then hit CLEAN UP under the System Restore and Shadow Copies heading. Then keep selecting Delete and OK until it has cleaned everything up. You should then Defragment your C: Drive.